New Skills, New Mindset
Tripty Arya
July 12, 2025
C-Suite Leaders,
Transformation is here — but your workforce may not be ready for it.
Not because they’re unwilling. But because they’ve never been asked to learn like this before.
Across industries, teams are navigating the most profound shift in how work gets done since the introduction of the internet. The catalyst? AI and GenAI. The challenge? People. AI maybe on the roadmap, but its often being led without the people ready to activate it. That’s the gap we’re facing now: we’ve invested in transformation, but we haven’t yet built the workforce to lead it.
According to LinkedIn’s latest Work Change report, seven in ten executives say the pace of change at work is accelerating, while nearly two-thirds of employees feel overwhelmed by it. It’s not a lack of talent. It’s a lack of clarity. What should we be learning? What skills matter now? Who is a “digital worker”? Which role is touched by AI?
And more critically: how do we prepare people for jobs that didn’t exist a decade ago, with tools that change weekly, in an enterprise that’s still organized around roles and responsibilities from a pre-AI era? This isn’t a pipeline problem. It’s a mindset problem. And it’s an opportunity.
“The Last Generation Managing Only Humans”
Marc Benioff recently said that today’s executives represent “the last generation to manage only humans.” That’s not a prediction. It’s a reality that needs redefining of textbooks. Already, GenAI is automating first drafts, triaging support tickets, optimizing workflows, and elevating insights. It may or may not be replacing people but it’s surely reshaping how they work.Yet, most org charts, training models, and governance frameworks haven’t caught up. We’re operating with early versions of 2030 tools inside a 2010 culture.
Traditionally, skills were acquired, applied, and then scaled. In this new world, skills are learned in motion with AI interfaces, collaborative tools, and always-evolving workflows. What matters most now isn’t just what people know. It’s how they adapt. The workforce of the next decade won’t be built on job titles. It will be built on capabilities, curiosity, and the confidence to adapt. That means we need a different kind of mindset and a different relationship to work.
From Operators to Explorers
At Travtus, we describe the future of work as being led by “Everyday Explorers.” These are not just power users or engineers. They are the problem-solvers and tinkerers who engage with new tools, test limits, and learn by doing. They aren’t hired with checklists. They’re discovered through culture.
The shift is subtle but critical:
The best employees won’t be the ones who “know.” They’ll be the ones who are willing to figure it out.
Roles will be less about what people do, and more about how they navigate change.
Learning becomes embedded, not episodic. Enterprises will need to operate in what one leader recently called “permanent beta.”
This is the future of work. Not a job description, but a learning system. We’re seeing the early signals across leading companies: Amazon’s AI Ready initiative is training 2 million people in GenAI tools through free courses and scholarships. Salesforce’s Trailhead makes hands-on AI certifications accessible to frontline and HQ teams alike. And Large PE Funds are working with partners to offer solutions that allow their teams to “tinker” so recognise the talent for problem solving.
These leaders understand what many still don’t: the future isn’t built through hiring alone. It’s built through learning, at scale, in motion.And that requires a new relationship between people, processes, and partners. It’s no longer enough to deploy tools. Upskilling isn’t an event. It’s a system. It must be embedded in workflows, connected to business outcomes, and powered by partnerships that understand enterprise scale.
A Playbook for C-Suite Leaders Building a Learning Enterprise
This isn’t just an HR initiative. It’s enterprise strategy. Here’s how leading organizations are approaching it:
[Map Reality] Skills, Not Titles
Start with the workforce you already have. Most organizations don’t know what skills are active across their teams today. Use AI to map skills dynamically, not just by role, but by behaviors, certifications, and tool usage. This will help you identify who is already exploring, not just who was hired to.
[Reframe Learning] Embed, Don’t Extract
Stop treating training as an event. Make learning part of the workflow, not an interruption from it. Think of your operations like software: they need CI/CD — Continuous Integration, Continuous Development. The same goes for your people.
[Restructure Motivation] Rethink Performance and Progression
If AI changes how work is done, it also changes how we evaluate it. Promotion, recognition, and performance reviews must reflect new values: experimentation, systems thinking, co-working with machines. You can’t reward only outcomes when exploration is the new input.
[Select Better Partners] From Vendors to Co-Learners
Transformation partners must act like intellectual allies. Are your vendors just selling features—or are they helping you build workforce readiness? Enterprise-scale partners should come with learning pathways, embedded enablement, and systems that support organizational curiosity.
The Organizations That Will Win
The companies that lead the next decade won’t be the ones that deployed the most AI — they’ll be the ones that built a workforce ready to work with it.
That means going beyond job descriptions. Beyond one-off trainings. And beyond talent marketplaces that treat skills as keywords. The real advantage lies in fostering a culture of Everyday Explorers — those who ask better questions, test boldly, and treat change as a habit, not a disruption.
In the AI era, your people are not just users of systems. They are co-architects of how those systems evolve. And their ability to learn — quietly, continuously, and collectively — may be the single most strategic asset you have.
Until another Saturday.
Best,
Tripty
About This Email Series
This email is part of an ongoing Strategy Saturday series written for C-suite leaders and focused on the strategic shifts required to lead effectively in an AI-driven world. The insights and perspectives shared are intended to support strategic reflection and informed decision-making, rather than prescribe specific actions.
